Working out Your Competitive Advantage
There are very few unique ideas in the world; don’t think you are the first person in the billions of people in the world to think of it. The difference between success and failure relies on a lot of factors, like management and customer service, but every successful product has some distinguishing characteristic, some competitive advantage, that sets it apart from the competitors. These unique characteristics succeed because the customer sees more value in them—and consequently, in your product—than other products.
Not every successful feature translates into a competition-crushing product. Your product may have a price advantage, but that might only appeal to a small part of the market interested in ease of use. Your product may be blue instead of red, and that, for some crazy reason, might appeal to a huge part of the market, making your sales skyrocket. There are tons of examples of products in which a seemingly simple difference made a huge difference.
So, finding that simple difference can lead to success. How do you find it? I’ve been studying sales process for many years and I think I have an idea. In sales, one important thing to ask prospects is how… Continue reading
Pitching is a Sales Process – Part 1
By popular demand (OK, a couple people asked) I’m writing a follow-up to my post a couple weeks ago about pitching your idea. I’ve been working with corporate clients for 15 years, developing interactive training programs built with my SoundLearningX© system. Because of the nature of the program, I got involved in a lot of sales-related projects, everything from financial and insurance sales to nuts and bolts and pharma sales, even military recruiting and tax preparation (seriously).
Startup Assembly Manual is mostly about getting a founder “investor-ready”, building a package that will resonate with potential investors. That, obviously, leads to the process of “pitching the idea”. When I got to the chapter on presenting to investors, I put two and two together and realized that it is a sales process. Having pitched a few deals, watched a lot of pitches and investor reactions, and caught a few deals as an angel, I came up with a structure for pitching.
First, you have to understand the expectations and motivations of an investor. Why are they there? What are they looking for? What do they want to hear? What is the fundamental, crucial point you have to prove to… Continue reading
Simple Recipe for an Entrepreneur’s Success
To achieve success as an entrepreneur, it takes Ambition, Commitment, a Plan, and a Product people will pay for. If you have the first two, you can work out the others.
I was thinking about all the successful entrepreneurs I’ve known and had a couple of thoughts. They aren’t necessarily the smartest people, the most innovative or inventive people I’ve ever met. One thing is common: ambition, the drive to be successful, to push through tacklers and keep their eyes on the end zone, knowing they will get there, and the passion to keep working on the process.
The most common other characteristics I have seen are commitment and confidence. Confidence is fired by positive feedback, but also by the willingness to ask for feedback, and the strength to know what to do with negative feedback. The lack of stubbornness and closed-mindedness seems to help, too. All have a clear vision and a definitive goal. Most are eager to prove the validity of their product by listening to customers—if customers don’t see value, they don’t buy. Most successful entrepreneurs are willing to listen to other points of view and sort out which ideas fit… Continue reading
Do what you love and you won’t work a day?
I’m re-posting this because I got a lot of feedback. The majority agreed but some people wanted to modify my premise. One said maybe you should lower your expectations and “do what you like”. Do a job that’s “sort of satisfying”? I don’t think so–not my style. I believe everybody is good at, and has a passion for, something, and that something is the heart of what you love to do. Therefore, the key to finding something that you love to do is in finding what you really do well and have a passion for. Of course, if nobody will pay you for that endeavor, maybe you’ve just discovered a good hobby.
Anyway, here’s the original post:
“Do what you love and you won’t work a day” is inane bull-crap, IMHO. I love drinking beer, I truly do. But, no one will pay me for that. I love creating graphic art, which I think is pretty good, but it seems as though no one will pay me for that, either! Could I make a living out of playing with my kids? Doubtful. I’m passionate about writing songs, but since no one has bought anything I wrote,… Continue reading
How do you get “Great Ideas”?
When aspiring entrepreneurs finally realize they have what it takes—desire, passion, drive, ambition— to be successful, they inevitably ask: “what great idea do I use to start my business?”
Or, it is the other way around: They have great ideas and ask: “now what?” and “do I have what it takes?”
I wrote my book for the last group, but I find there are a lot of people in the first group, too. One thing is common to both, however: the word “idea”. The second group already came up with an idea and the first group needs to come up with an idea. So, what’s the process of coming up with “ideas”?
I don’t necessarily believe in the pure “light bulb going on” explanation. Great ideas come from somewhere. Like the first big bubble of a pot of water set to boil for spaghetti, getting a worthy idea doesn’t just happen; there’s a lot of planning (filling the pot, turning on the fire) and time. The water just sits there for a while, the potential for boiling just invisibly building up. There are a bunch of little bubbles, but barely noticeable, especially if… Continue reading
The Seven Steps of Customer Investigation
When aspiring entrepreneurs finally realize they have to spend more time developing the customer than developing the product in the early days, they are faced with a dilemma: “You mean I have to actually TALK to people?”
Steve Blank and Eric Ries would answer the same way: yes. You can’t build a product around who you think is the customer and what their problem is and how they want to solve it and whether or not your product offers a compelling solution—you are not the customer! Only the customer is the customer. You have assumptions, but you have to define and verify them before finalizing your product, so you have to get out there and do the process of customer investigation.
So, how? I suggest Seven Steps, which are built around sales process as it applies to qualifying a prospect.
1: Ask for permission – show respect and consideration; ask for permission and help
2: Qualify the prospect – do they fit the customer profile?
3: Problem probe – do they recognize the problem?
4: Solution probe – are they looking for a solution?
5: Urgency probe – how urgent is the need to solve… Continue reading
Does Self Assessment Really Come First?
I spend a lot of ink on self assessment in my book. I always thought that you have to figure out what you’re capable of and can do and are good at and passionate about before you can make a wise choice to be an entrepreneur. In my analytical, architectural mind, that makes sense: build a foundation of understanding—of yourself, your customer, your product—before you build the product and the business. However…
I recently saw the results of a poll on an entrepreneur-oriented web site that had 51% saying they think it’s a better idea to learn about starting a business by just starting a business. Only 22% thought they should get prepared by talking to successful (and unsuccessful) entrepreneurs or read books before they make the plunge. That just doesn’t seem right to me.
Here’s my dilemma: I started out by just starting out; damn the torpedoes and all of that. I figured it out as I went along and I succeeded with luck and balls. Now, many years later, I’m telling people what I learned: that you can really screw it up if you don’t learn a few things first. Luck and balls… Continue reading
Testing Assumptions with Customers
When you are testing the assumptions you generate in the Assessment stage of the ACE Methodology, you have to first define and verify them through research in the Confirmation stage. This means asking a lot of prospective customers the three critical questions: 1) do they really have the problem you think they do?, 2) do they have an urgent need to solve it?, and 3) does your product seem to offer a compelling solution? The customer investigation process is an important part of designing a successful product.
To do this, you have to ask people these questions, either in-person or virtually. Conducting face-to-face interviews is best because you can judge their reaction and ask probing questions. In Startup Assembly Manual, we discuss the Seven Steps of customer investigation; it’s a sales process structure.
Virtual interviews need a different strategy. You have to test your marketing message through a web site or social media to get the answers to the questions. The best method I’ve tried on the web is where your home page has a random redirect function to four different pages. Each page has a different message, which basically asks… Continue reading
I need to be an entrepreneur. Now what?
I cross paths with a lot of people, especially older job seekers, who say “I need to start my own business, but I don’t know what it will be”. Wanting to be an entrepreneur and independent is the first step along a path of millions of steps, each one carrying the virus of failure. If you don’t choose a target really well in this first step, you probably will catch the failure flu. So, how do you choose?
I think the basic foundation of any successful business person is a really strong self-assessment. That’s the first step in the ACE Methodology. I’ve found that successful entrepreneurs fully understand their strengths, weaknesses, passions, experience and values then put them to work in a focused direction. Honest self-assessment is really hard (you think it would be easy, but it isn’t) because you can be too close to yourself. Friends and family (even strangers) often have a better perspective on what you’re good at and passionate about.
“Passions” will help you get up in the morning to accomplish something. “Strengths” will help you do it well. “Experience” will help you avoid a long education and rookie mistakes.… Continue reading
Pitching to Investors is a Sales Process
When entrepreneurs try to raise money at any level, it involves a “pitch”. Pitching to investors can be defined within the context of a sales process where you and your idea is the product and the investor is the customer. There are some rules, but first, don’t pitch until you are ready.
Before the pitch, entrepreneurs have to understand the investor’s mindset, what they are looking for. They want a place to put money that has the potential for maximum return with as minimum of risk as possible. They don’t normally want to “take a flyer” on an unproven concept. Therefore, you have to prepared with as strong a “proof of concept” as you can. There are three flavors of proof of concept: technical (does it work; does it give the customer the value proposition it promises); economic (is the price customers will pay be more than a summation of the costs involved in producing and selling and distributing it).
The third is “social” proof of concept where you have proven that there a lots of people with a) a real problem (the one you think they have), b) an urgent need to… Continue reading
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